Independent, apolitical process to updating Canadian long-term care standard begins

The uneven use of long-term care (LTC) standards across Canada has become a political discussion during the course of the COVID-19 pandemic thanks to a federal Liberal promise, but the experts driving a new process to updating an existing standard are promising an independent, non-politicized course of action.

“This process basically is not dependent on … what any of the federal politicians or the provincial and territorial politicians wishes it to be. The key is standards are standards, they’re developed independently, [and] they’re developed by arm’s-length bodies,” said Dr. Samir Sinha, Director of Health Policy Research at the NIA.

LEARN MORE>

Read More

‘Better, but not enough’: A change to the definition of an outbreak in long-term-care homes spurs calls to loosen restrictions

Nathan Stall, Associate Fellow at the NIA, said the change is “appropriate”; even in the face of a surging third wave, long-term-care homes are seeing single-digit COVID-19 cases.

“This will help residents in terms of reducing some of those unnecessary or extremely stringent isolation precautions ... but there’s still a lot more we need to do, given the remarkable success of vaccines in long-term-care settings,” he said.

LEARN MORE>

Read More

Ontario updates definition of outbreak in long-term care homes

Dr. Samir Sinha Director of Health Policy Research at the NIA, joined Ottawa Morning with Robyn Bresnahan to discuss the definition of outbreak in long-term care home and the changing guidelines.

LEARN MORE>

Read More

'Fear ageism, not aging': How an ageist society is failing its elders

Despite our denial, we are all old people in training. And to become old often means to become 'the other' in Western society. It's a reality that experts and senior advocates can attest to. Featuring a conversation with Dr. Samir Sinha, Director of Health Policy Research at the NIA.

LEARN MORE>

Read More

Residents at a Toronto seniors home weren’t getting their COVID-19 vaccines. So the property manager stepped up

By: Brendan Kennedy

Data released Thursday in a presentation by the province’s COVID-19 Science Advisory Table showed that of those 80 and older, only 50 per cent had been vaccinated in the neighbourhoods with the highest rates of COVID-19, compared to 70 per cent in neighbourhoods with the lowest rates of infection. “That’s a disastrous gap,” said Dr. Nathan Stall, Associate Fellow at the NIA.

LEARN MORE>

Read More

‘It’s like we’re not here at all’: Homebound seniors feel like COVID-19 vaccination rollout has failed them

By: Francine Kopun

There are an estimated 20,000 people over the age of 65 in Toronto who are homebound — meaning they cannot or rarely leave their homes — and 75,000 across the province, according to Dr. Samir Sinha, the Seniors Clinical Lead, for Ontario Health’s Toronto Region and the Director of Health Policy Research at the NIA.

It will take several months to immunize all the seniors who are homebound in Toronto, Sinha said. “We’ve never vaccinated this many homebound people ever in the history of Toronto.”

LEARN MORE>

Read More

One of Canada’s largest nursing and retirement home chains reveals low vaccination rate among staff, asks government for help

By: Diana Zlomislic

In British Columbia, which started loosening restrictions placed on nursing homes on Thursday, the rate of staff vaccinations is 91 per cent, according to a new report by the National Institute on Ageing at Ryerson University.

“There’s something happening there that needs to be addressed as soon as possible to better protect staff and residents,” said Dr. Samir Sinha, Director of Health Policy Research at the NIA. “It’s concerning.”

LEARN MORE>

Read More

Coronavirus pandemic: How experts say Canada can escape the third wave

Dr. Nathan Stall, Associate Fellow at the NIA and a member of Ontario's COVID-19 Science Advisory Table, told CTV News Channel on Wednesday ahead of Ontario's announcement that when officials delay shutdowns, it just makes things worse.

"I think it was incompetent to wait this long, and I frankly don't know why, when […] we've done this twice already, we needed to be in this situation where people are dying, surgeries and other people's procedures are going to be cancelled, in-class learning is at jeopardy, businesses are going to be closed again — this wasn't necessary had we acted earlier," he said.

LEARN MORE>

Read More

Toronto asks province to let anyone aged 60 and older get COVID-19 vaccination — lowering threshold a full decade

The biggest failure is how Canada failed to protect elderly residents living in long-term care homes in not just the first wave, but also the second resurgence — unforgivable in a system that was exposed as fragile many years ago by the National Institute on Ageing at Ryerson University. That’s on all of us. Other countries like the U.K., which experienced steeper first and second waves of COVID-19, did not experience nearly the same rate of death among vulnerable nursing home residents.

LEARN MORE>

Read More

Paramedics bring COVID-19 vaccines to homebound seniors across Ontario

"We're already realizing very quickly, as we predicted, that there are people who are being left behind," said Toronto geriatrician Dr. Samir Sinha, who is involved in planning the homebound vaccinations strategy in his city.

Seniors might not be signing up for a variety of reasons, including trouble navigating online booking systems, accessing the phone line or inability to get to a physical site, Sinha said.

Primary care providers and community paramedics have started performing some vaccinations for homebound patients in Toronto, Sinha said.

LEARN MORE>

Read More

Canada has worst record for LTC deaths

Dr. Samir Sinha, Director of Health Policy Research at the NIA, joined CTV News to discuss the new report released by Canadian Institute for Health Information (CIHI), in partnership with the National Institute on Ageing about COVID-19's impact on long term care homes.

LEARN MORE>

Read More

COVID-19 revealed the shortcomings of long-term care in Canada. Could a new push for national standards be the solution?

There is some overlap, so the two organizations are collaborating, said Dr. Samir Sinha, Director of Geriatrics at Mount Sinai and the University Health Network Hospitals in Toronto. He has been tapped to lead the HSO committee to shape a better standard for services and operations.

“This will be meaningful work because it’s actually going to be the basis of care at least in two-thirds of our homes across the country,” Sinha said in an interview. “But potentially it could be adopted universally if the provinces, and the territories and the federal government want to support that as well.”

LEARN MORE>

Read More

Use mobile vaccinations to reach Ontario's 75,000 homebound seniors, says COVID-19 science table

By: Lauren Pelley

The push is from Ontario's COVID-19 Science Advisory Table, which released a new briefing note on Wednesday evening. The team's analysis notes at least 75,000 Ontarians aged 65 and up rarely if ever leave their homes because of various medical, psychiatric, cognitive, social or transportation-related reasons.

The majority, the note continues, are aged 85 and older.

"Some people — a lot of people — may want to be vaccinated but simply cannot get to the clinic," said Dr. Nathan Stall, a geriatrician and advisory table member who is the lead author on the briefing note.

LEARN MORE>

Read More

Toronto asks province to let anyone aged 60 and older get COVID-19 vaccination — lowering threshold a full decade

By: David Rider

Later Tuesday Dr. Nathan Stall, a Mount Sinai Hospital geriatrician and member of the Ontario’s science advisory table, told the Star: “I’d be shocked if we were not in lockdown shortly before or after this weekend.” With highly contagious COVID-19 variants surging, filling ICUs with younger adults, Toronto and other regions hard hit by the virus are in grave danger, Stall said.

LEARN MORE>

Read More

Provinces didn’t do enough to prevent COVID-19 deaths in nursing homes

A new report finds Canada had the record among wealthy nations for the impact of COVID-19 on long-term care and many provinces didn’t do enough to fix problems ahead of the second wave. And advocates say governments are still not doing enough to improve conditions.

LEARN MORE>

Read More

Lack of medical care contributed to nursing home deaths: report

By: Karen Howlett

Dr. Samir Sinha, the Director of Health Policy Research at the NIA and expert adviser to CIHI, said residents sickened with non COVID-19 conditions were not sent to hospital because of physician absences at the homes and a lack of medical care. For those residents afflicted with COVID-19, he said, “blatant discrimination” was behind the decision not to transfer many of them to hospital.

“The overwhelming narrative was if patients [in nursing homes] get COVID, don’t send them to hospital,” Dr. Sinha said. “That narrative really shortchanged the situation for many of these residents.”

LEARN MORE>

Read More

Canada’s Atlantic provinces have kept COVID-19 largely at bay — here’s how

By: Saba Aziz

In a previous report by Global News, Dr. Samir Sinha, Director of Health Policy Research at the NIA, said Nova Scotia was not “approaching their vaccination strategy with the same zeal as other jurisdictions.”

LEARN MORE>

Read More

They were sicker and more vulnerable. So why did long-term-care patients see fewer doctors during COVID’s first wave?

By: Kenyon Wallace

Dr. Samir Sinha, director of health policy research at the National Institute on Ageing at Ryerson University and a contributor to the CIHI report, said many infections can be treated by doctors in long-term-care homes but patients may need to be transferred to hospital if conditions worsen.

LEARN MORE>

Read More

Ontario seniors stuck inside long-term care want to be let out

“We can probably estimate that across Ontario, there’s 40,000 individuals that we would see be homebound. People who for example getting a vaccine in their own home is a necessity, not a convenience,” said Dr. Samir Sinha, Director of Health Policy Research at the NIA.

LEARN MORE>

Read More

Pfizer to Move up Delivery of Vaccine Doses

Dr. Samir Sinha, Director of Health Policy Research at the NIA, joined CTV Power Play to discuss the need to vaccinate older adults for COVID-19,

LEARN MORE>

Read More